So far this week...

Sunday- Besides hearing an awesome sermon, Cory and I spent Sunday working in the yard and cleaning house. BUT there was also time for relaxation. As you know, Luna follows momma everywhere and has to do absolutely everything with me...so we sat down with a good book for awhile.



Monday- Yesterday we made a trip to Amarillo to donate platelets. Corys donation was successful. He donated two units of platelets and one unit of plasma that will be used for newborn babies. How awesome ! Im so proud of him for donating every chance he can. This was my second attempt to donate platelets, but unfortunately it did not work :( If you arent familiar with apheresis, they put a needle in your arm very much like donating blood but you are hooked up to a machine that draws the blood out, seperates whatever contents they are needing from your blood and then putting your blood back in. That is alot of pressure on your vein. Evidently my veins are to small so when they turned the machine on, the pressure "sucks" the vein and since mine are to small to with-hold they pressure, they collapse. They tried hard to get it to work by moving the needle a bit, but they were worried about infiltrating so they stopped :( Unfortunately I was unable to donate blood that day because they had already issued me a number and their system would not allow me to "donate twice." I was sad because I had prepared for platelets! They had told me last time to drink ALOT of water the night before and the morning of my donation. I did but evidently my veins hate apheresis. Luckily for some babies somewhere, Cory was able to. After donations, we spent the day at the in-laws house and had a great time of visiting. We stopped in Canyon on our way home to have dinner with Kendra and Brandon. On the way home, we encountered another massive storm so naturally I went into storm chasing mode. Here are some awesome shots of the storm.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037578&l=d607b&id=71902931

Today: Today I worked around the house so nothing exciting to report. I did post pictures of the Chicago gang's trip to Texas. They visited us June 7th-June 14th and we had ALOT of fun with them :) Here are some pics of our awesome time with our pals.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037560&l=88a34&id=71902931


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037571&l=bc37a&id=71902931

Lastly, I want to leave you with an adorable video. I hope it makes you smile =)

Judgement

I have a rather interesting story to tell about Sunday.

I rather enjoyed the sermon at our church on Sunday and it was also slightly ironic, which I will explain shortly. Romans 14:10-12 says "You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down upon your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. It is written 'As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before me, every tongue will confess to God' so then, each of us will give an account of himself to God." In other words, every person will be judged. The fact the sermon was based on judgment was ironic because Saturday night I started reading a book by Bill Wiese called "23 minutes in hell." It is a story of a man who claims he was sent to Hell for 23 minutes by God so that he could share the reality that when we are judged, Hell is real so we shouldn’t take our eternity lightly. We should live our lives as Christ followers so that we may find our place in Heaven as God so greatly desires. Unfortunately, this is a difficult task for mankind. In his book Wiese says "you may not believe me. You may think I dreamt this or perhaps I’m making this up, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you believe what He has to say." Throughout the entire book, he footnotes as he tells his story and references bible verses that reflect Hell. It is quite an interesting book. I just found it very ironic that I would start this book and the next day the sermon reflected what I am currently reading about. I like to call that a "god thing" when "ironic" things like that happen.

Here is the 4 points that our preacher made on the judgment we will all face.

1) You do not want to stand before God having broken a promise made to him. Check this verse out. Ecc 5: 4-5. "It is better not to vow than to make a vow and not fulfill it"

2) You don’t want to stand before God having caused a child to stumble. Check out Matthew 18:1-6.

3) You don’t want to stand before God having sown seeds of discord in the body of Christ. Check out Proverbs 6:16-19.

4) (THIS IS THE BIGGIE TO ME!) You don’t want to stand before God having failed to share Christ with those who need him. see 1 John 1:3 .

This fourth one is another reason I’m blogging about this sermon. This has been on my heart lately as well. A few days ago I was just thinking about this and I told Cory that I had a great desire to serve others, not only in my nursing career but outside of it as well. I would love to volunteer to help homeless or do missions or whatever I can to reach out to others. I feel like God wanted me to read this book and hear this sermon so I could further understand the reality that Heaven and Hell are real and that judgment is inevitable. I hope this blog doesn’t sound depressing with its "you don't"s but we will be judged one day and I know where I wanna go. I am in no way perfect and I know this, but luckily I have Christ who died to make up for my imperfections and yours as well :) I really want to look into the future and take every opportunity I can to share with others Christ's love.

I want to leave you with one of my favorite verses. Titus 3:4-7 “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us thought the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior. So that having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs of having the hope of eternal life.”

God bless everyone =)

Short entry!

Today was a productive day! We took a few hours to fix a part of our fence that had blown over. Everything is secure now, phew! I did a lil deweeding, worked in the flowerbed a bit and reorganized the office (which was an all day project). We ended the day with a nice walk with the dogs.

I also forgot to post these pictures with the anniversary pictures. These were the gifts Cory and I got for each other. The pictures explain themselves in the captions. I hope everyone had a great Saturday =)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037387&l=60c96&id=71902931

Getting caught up!!!

WE ARE BACK!

We arrived back in Plainview on the 8th after a 15 hour roadtrip with our Chicago gang :) (I just want to add that while I am blogging here, my puppy is howling at me to play with her, oh children!) Anyway! I have about 8 albums of photos to upload : I have pics of our Florida trip, our friends visiting, our anniversary! I am goin to work on getting them up over the next few days as much as possible. (whoa whoaaaaa Luna says! and now she is killing her stuffed pig toy and trying to put it in my lap) Lets get to the pictures and updates shall we!? (whoa whoaaa WHOAAAA and now she is chasing her tail- wow she is bored)

So remember that big news we had. well here it is. Here is Cory's new baby. We decided that since I will be going to school 4 days a week which is about 90 miles a day and he will be goin about the same 5 days a week to Texas Tech (ya, we do alot of driving), that we needed something for Cory that will not eat gas quite like his truck. So here is is new baby and he is OH SO VERY proud of it :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037317&l=fdb69&id=71902931

Here is a few pictures of our actual anniversary. We spent it at home with Chicago gang. We are calling it our 2-D anniversary (paper) because we called it a "flat" day. Flat is one of our "family terms" that my mother has created. It derives from "Flat weasel." I will try to explain lol. When a ferret is bored, they lay really flat on thier tummy. My mom created this "flat weasel" term to mean bored. So since we had already gone to Florida for our anniversary and stayed home, this was our "flat anniversary" ;) which went well with paper! Speaking of paper, Cory and I had decided to not get each other cards since our weekend was very busy and we roadtripped home and didnt have time to get cards. I completely forgot that I had gotten him the best card in the world! So later that day, I gave it to him and then complained (in a playful way) about how I didnt get a card ;) Im sneaky eh! We have also decided that each year on our anniversary we are goin to take a picture of the two of us and frame it and add to the frame each year. For as many years we are married there will be a picture and it will be neat to see how we have changed over the years. Wont it be awesome if someday that frame has 50 pictures??? It was a very fun and relaxing day. I cant believe we have been married one year already!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037324&l=2ea51&id=71902931

Ok, last album for the day! Yesterday, we had a 60,000 ft supercell storm hit us. I am so fascinated by storms and weather. I think clouds are one of Gods many versions of artwork! Here are some pics of my stormchasing experience yesterday.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037328&l=c4d2f&id=71902931

Hope you all enjoy the pics. I will post the pics of the ... (whoa whoa...*nudging my hand off the keyboard* says Luna)... of the Florida trip and our friend visits here within the next few days so I will be caught up!!! Take care everyone and God bless =)

First Troop!

Its official. Cory and I have completed our first mission! Yesterday, Cory and I trooped along side Dad and a few others at the grand reopening of Borders in Brentwood Missouri. It was so much fun. To see how much joy and smiles trooping brings to not only the childrens faces, but also the adults, is so awesome! As soon as we came out of the backroom, there was a massive line of people to get thier pictures taken with us (for free of course!) It was alot of fun ! I couldnt take to many pictures cuz we were pretty busy, providing Borders with extra security ;) But I did manage to pull a few fun pics out of the event! I cant wait to troop more events. It was such a blast! Enjoy the pics =)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036524&l=fe3bb&id=71902931

Me and my trooperdaddy!

Catching up with the pics

A new method of posting pics! I will be posting the links on the blog now :) I will still be sending an email to let you know that I put the links here (which is probly why you are visiting the blog right now !) So here goes...

I would recommend right clicking on the link and choosing "opening link in a new tab" so you dont have to reopen the blog each time you view a set of pics. If you just click on the link, it will take you away from the blog and you will have to reopen it to view the rest of the pics.

Easter - ya, a lil late on posting them but still =)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036351&l=62a93&id=71902931


Random - These are just completely random pics from April

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036352&l=7a648&id=71902931

Palo Duro Canyon- these are the pics from the blog of our Palo Duro Experience

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036353&l=1b46f&id=71902931


Hope everyone is doing well and congrats to those that graduated!!! Yay for summer!

Love
Stephanie

A change of plans

Cory and I just got back from Orlando Florida where we celebrated our approaching 1 year anniversary with roller coasters and amazing rides at Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure and my personal favorite, Seaworld! I will post links to pics sometime this week of our fun.

To the change of plans...Cory is no longer going to start grad school over the summer (at least classes anyway), he has decided that since taking one class over the summer wont help him graduate any sooner, he is better off starting his thesis. He has chosen to do the thesis option and this summer he will be working on his literature reviews and doing research for background information. In his words his focus is going to be on "combustion synthesis of aluminum titanium alloy with graded porosity for use in bone replacement." Perhaps some of you engineers out there will understand that : He has picked out the professor he wants to work with and while this is still biomedical, he will graduate with a graduate degree in mechanical engineering with a focus in design. So thats exciting news. =)

We are in STL for 2 more weeks. On June 7 Aaron and Matt are flying into St. Louis and driving back to Texas to spend a week with us. Either that week or the following Emily will be joining us for a week of fun as well! We are so excited to have friends come stay with us =) It will be so much fun!

I have much more to share about the trip but I must get the pics organized first :) I also have big news for Cory and I (no, we are not having a baby ;) ) but it is still rather exciting news. But I will share that in a few days...after I get some pics of it! Hope everyone is doing well and I will post pics soon.

In His Love,
Stephanie